The following relates to wireless communication, and more specifically to positioning signals for narrowband devices.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
In some cases, a UE may be a low-cost or low-complexity machine type communication (MTC) device that may communicate with a base station in a narrow subband, or narrowband regions, of a system bandwidth of a wireless communications system. Such UEs may be referred to as narrowband devices. Because of the reduced bandwidth available for communications between a base station and narrowband device, some periodic signals provided by the base station may have reduced opportunities for transmission, which may impact some UE operations. For example, a base station may transmit a positioning reference signal (PRS) at a predetermined time period interval, which may be used to determine an accurate position of the UE. In cases where a UE is capable of communications using the full system bandwidth, PRS transmissions may be provided across a PRS bandwidth that may cover the system bandwidth, or cover some portion of the system bandwidth. A narrowband device may, however, be capable of communications using less than the full PRS bandwidth, which may result in fewer PRS transmissions being received at the narrowband device and thus fewer PRS measurements that may be used for position determination.
Reduced PRS measurements at narrowband devices may thus delay position determination for a UE, provide less accurate position for the UE, or both. Accordingly, enhanced efficiency in making PRS measurements in narrowband devices may be desirable in order to provide a relatively accurate position for the UE in a relatively time-efficient manner.